Of course, in battle repair point shouldn't cost anything because they are by nature temporary.

So the repair costs I was talking about are the between scenario repairs. I suppose new should cost more than to repair something.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Tuesday, August 07, 2007 - 10:12 am: Edit

Back to the topic... (grin)

My current thinking on this is to post a table of what I think might serve, and let people comment on it.

Die Roll

______________Die Roll______________

	1	2	3	4	5	6
___1__	1xF-S	1xF-S	1xF-S	1xF-S	1xF-S	1xF-S
___2__	1xF-S	1xF-S	1xF-S	1xF-S	1xF-S	1xF-S
___3__	1xF-L	1xF-L	1xF-L	1xF-L	1xF-L	1xF-L
___4__	2xF-S	2xF-S	2xF-S	2xF-S	2xF-S	2xF-S
___5__	2xF-L	2xF-L	2xF-L	2xF-L	2xF-L	2xF-L
___6__	1xF-OL	1xAPT	1xFT	TrmpSt	1xF-LS	1xF-LL

Suggestions to modify table...

1. depending on year, the number of Skids and ducktails would vary. in year 140, (at a guess) there might be 1 freighter out of every 6 (both large and small) who might have such a set, or partial set.

In year 168, maybe 1 of every 2 freighters might be so equipped.

and after year 185+ 5 out of 6 frighters might be Skid and ducktail equipped.

(please discuss, the numbers, so far as I know, haven't been quantified, so I could be way off.)

2. In the box listed as having a APT, what if, 5 times out of 6 it really is a APT, and the 6th time (determined by rolling a die or a card flip) it turns out to be a Fed ExPress Transport?

3. In the box listed as having a Free Trader, 5 times out of 6 it is actually a FT, but 1 time out of 6 it is a Free Traitor.

4. We need a rule or procedure to integrate the use of a deck of cards so that the presence of Q ships, armed freighters additional boarding parties(perhaos), and maybe Mike Graftons "weary Donkey" carrier thing (Skids and ducktails with F-7 or class I fighters instead of cargo shuttles).

Other things the cards could be used to determine are special modifications to the scenarios... perhaps the pirate ship gets a contract to be a convoy escort under a mercenary thing?!?

Lots of opportunity to modify the encounter lists, but we need a consistant rationale to apply so that the system is logical, easy to apply and to remember.

5. in the interests of creating a "Pirates Campaign Game", perhaps what needs to be done, is select the initial ship, and set a criteria for calculating cost of repairs, upgrades, optional weapons, overhaul or selling the old ship and provision for purchasing a larger one. (Al a Lorens suggested "cash exchange" thingee posted earlier...

Comments?

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Tuesday, August 07, 2007 - 10:32 am: Edit

I'll make some comments, the table represents some 48 ships, (50, if the substitutions in #2 and #3 are added for the Fed Express and the Orion Free Traitor).

Each "box" of the matrix has an equal chance to be selected (the single 6 sider on the columns and the other 6 sider indicating rows, are assumed to be a true random roll) that means each box has less than a 3% chance of being selected. (the chances of a Fed Express or a Orion Free Traitor being roughly 15% of the 3% option of being selected... means that while either ship could be selected, the odds of it actually happening are vanishingly small...)

out of the total of 48 ships (or 50...if options #2 and #3 are used) no less than 24 of the hulls are small freighters (half of which are singles, the other half or F-S traveling in pairs).

OF the remaing 24 (or 26 ships, if the Fed Express and Orion Free trader are represented), 18 are F-L in either single of in pairs), 1xF-OL, 1xAPT (or Fed Espress), 1xFT (or O-FT), 1x Tramp Steamer, 1xF-SL and 1xF-LL.

In round numbers about 50% of the time a Small Freighter (or two) will be encounterd, and 33% of the time a Large Freighter (or two) will be found instead, with less that a 17% chance of some other individual ship(s) being encoutered.

If the Deck of cards thing is used, its possible that the ship (or ships) might be an armed freighter or a Q ship or that some other thing is "on" the ships... (that we would need to discuss what those "other " things could be... )

By Michael C. Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Tuesday, August 07, 2007 - 12:24 pm: Edit

NOTE: the varied skids (of which mine was just one) were in R11 IIRC.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Tuesday, August 07, 2007 - 01:19 pm: Edit

Michael, I don't have R11 yet, But IIRC, SVC posted a list of the skids that were to be included in R11.0.

I'll have to get a list of them, then we need to decide just how many of each type were in actual service...

If we are lucky, it'll be something easy like "80% of all skids were General Skids, 10% were LASH skids, and the other 10% were skids published in R11", or something like that...

Anyway to determine what the actual percentages were?

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Wednesday, August 08, 2007 - 04:45 pm: Edit

One other thought, in addition to the table posted earlier, the "card Flip" using a deck of playing cards, plus the joker, can be used to identify all the "hidden" things that tactical intelligence rules indicate are either not knowable or must be at very detailed levels of information.

Such as the joker indicating if a given ship is a Q ship, or boarding parties or perhaps other CO's that could be present on the freighter.

This isnt all of the things that could be revealed, but it gives an Idea of what I'm suggesting the cards could be used for... perhaps the card results for 2 to 8 could indicate planet assault on a mining station, or raid and Agriculter colony world?

Anyway, its just a thought.

Card	Spade	Clubs	Diamond	Heart
Ace	1xBP	2xBP	3xBP	4xBP
'2'	1xDummy TB	1xreal TB	1of each	2 of each
'3'	1xBP	2xBP	3xBP	4xBP
'4'	1xDummy TB	1xreal TB	1of each	2 of each
'5'	1xBP	2xBP	3xBP	4xBP
'6'	1xDummy TB	1xreal TB	1of each	2 of each
'7'	1xBP	2xBP	3xBP	4xBP
'8'	1xDummy TB	1xreal TB	1of each	2 of each
'9'	Small Armed Frtr	Small Armed Frtr	Small Armed Frtr	Small Armed Frtr
'10'	Large armed frtr	Large armed frtr	Large armed frtr	Large armed frtr
Jack	F-TS	F-TL	F-TS	F-TL
Queen	AuxCVL+F-4	AuxCVL+F-18	AuxCVA+F-4	AuxCVA+F-18
King	AuxPFLw/F101	AuxPFL/F111	AuxPFLw/F101	AuxPFL/F111

By Michael C. Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Wednesday, August 08, 2007 - 04:50 pm: Edit

My preference is

Die roll(s) gives you what the pirate sees.

Then a card or two gives the owner what he has within the limits of the die rolls.

So a 2d6 roll of 7 is a small freighter.

First card red= regular ship ignore second card, black= has something extra (BPs, skid, ducktail)

Second card Ace= Q ship...

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Wednesday, August 08, 2007 - 05:53 pm: Edit

Jeff Wile:

You have a concept, but I do not see that it is a "Pirate Captain's Campaign". A "Captain's Campaign normally takes the player through a series of scenarios in a single ship. Thus the "Captain's Game" starts you as the commander of a Cruiser, and the "Frigate Captain's Game starts you as the commander of a frigate, in both cases you play all the scenarios for the campaign with that one ship. You do not change ships.

What I want (not stopping you from going forward with your concept, just noting that you are very far "off the reservation" in terms of the Captain's game concept I was looking at) is a number of rounds an Orion would play in a Light Raider, with the goal of a successful light raider captain to be promotion (or able to purchase) the next ship up.

I wanted a campaign that would allow such an Orion LR captain to play again with his larger ship (with adjusted opponents for the capability of his new ship) to again strive for a larger ship.

Thus several different players could start as Light raider captains at the start of the campaign, and if they wanted, keep going with maybe one getting ahead (getting his next larger ship first) and thus drawing more attention.

So you could have the "Simple campaign" (we all start with LRs, or we all start with CRs, and the one who wins promotion/is able to buy the next larger ship first wins).

The basic campaign (I talk Paul Franz into running the opposition while I try to succeed in gaining a larger ship, the faster I do it, i.e., cargo grabbed and minimal expenses, the more Legendary I am).

Or the complex campaign (we all start with LRs, and each tries to advance as fast as possible, with maybe the option to "poach" each other's turf, or maybe have a "rumble", i.e., we gang up on him or maybe have some rule that one time lets us rat an opponent out to the cops, against the guy who is advancing fastest).

I tend to think you need to run it in at least the middle of the General War to optimize ship availability and drone speeds, but as noted that makes things very complex.

Maybe some system where the Orion players pick a Cartel, or cartels, that they are operating in. Maybe some option to spend ill gotten gains for interim modifications (replace a weapon with another one).

But I want to have the uncertainty about Q-ships and when the cops will arrive to make the Orions sweat, or there is little point to their actions.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Wednesday, August 08, 2007 - 06:09 pm: Edit

Loren Knight:

If it is not clear, I apologize, but I do not want to have a Tactical Intelligence System for an Orion Pirate Campaign that is wildly and illogically different than the way Tactical Intelligence works already and then have to explain why Orion tactical Intelligence is so poor and not reflected in other things.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Wednesday, August 08, 2007 - 10:33 pm: Edit

Yeah, I don't think that would have to be dumbed down. I don't know how to explain it other than by example. I'm finding myself swamped for the week so maybe I'll get to an example next week.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, August 09, 2007 - 10:06 am: Edit

Steve Petrick:

Your are correct, all it is is a concept of a part of the captains campaign Game.

the Whole structure would include the initial ship, a series of scenarios (such as duel with Pirate etc), and some means of determining "what" the Orion Pirate ship has encountered, and a means to handle campaign repairs and purchases of different ships as the Pirate captain gains stature and money.

I guess what I should be calling this, is "tinkering" with the concept.

At some point, we need to "pull" all or most or some of these various concepts together to form a true campaign game.

Towards that end, It would help if we could establish some answers to the questions that I and others have asked this last week.

For example, is the chance of encountering a Federation Express transport greater than, equal to or less than the 1.5% chance listed in the 8/7 10:12 AM post?

Or what about the probability of encounter specific Skid&/or Duck tail combinations? Am I correct in assuming that it is a lessor chance around year 140, and a better chance by year 168 and after year 185 it is virtually certain that every small and large freighter has either a skid, ducktail or both?

The answers to both questions would determine how we should weight the encounter tables.

By Michael C. Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Thursday, August 09, 2007 - 11:22 am: Edit

There would also have to be SOME means to vary the opposition.

If you bought a BR or CA a lone ship would have little chance at all.

So the level of the opposition would have to have some link to BPV...

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Thursday, August 09, 2007 - 12:20 pm: Edit

Jeff Wile:

Michael C. Grafton has the right of it.

I do not consider a simple table (might not be what you intend) that just says "roll this and you get a freighter" workable because the opposition MUST be varied based on the size of the Orion ship being used.

While trying to run down and disable a Fed Ex can be somewhat exciting for an LR (because his firepower is so comparatively small), for a BR it is not a challenge.

While tangling with a small Armed Freighter can cause some heartburn for an LR, a CR it represents no challenge.

The result is that to be workable the table has to be able to scale to the Orion ship being used.

My system (I apologize to you all that I did not keep it, but note again that at the time I created it there were far fewer options to be determined) pretty much pitted LRs against single freighters and CRs against Convoys (no single freighter can stand before a CR, and small Q-Ship has virtually no chance).

As to how often you would encounter a FX or APT, I never worried about it. The campaign I did never reflected the concept of how often you would encounter things of that nature, I just made them comparatively rare (I believe I noted I just assigned the three face cards to them and Free Traders, and divided the numbered cards between small and large freighters). There was never any attempt on my part to say: "This is every encounter the Orion Pirate had". I just went with: "These reflect the times when things did not go as expected." It was assumed the Orion did other things (Knocked over other freighters for example) as part of his operations, but when he hit this particular freighter "something went wrong".

But, back then all there were for freighters were:

Small Freighter, Small Armed Freighter, Small Q-Ship, Large Freighter, Large Armed freighter, Large Q-Ship, Free Traders, APT, and Federation Express.

And all there was for Orions was: Light Raider, War Destroyers, Raider Cruiser, and Battle Raider (the CA was the Goal to earn, not part of the campaign).

Today, the Small Freighter might be "clean" or have any one of 23 (Twenty-Three) Skids and any one of three (3) Ducktails.

By Michael C. Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Thursday, August 09, 2007 - 12:39 pm: Edit

Or be a an armed variant. Or an AUX.

An aux with a load of fighters or fighter supplies might be the most valuable thing on a freighter hull.

For example, a PFT conveyor ship packed with PFs in crates would be a GOLDMINE.

An aux CV would have all those fighter supplies, crated spare fighters and those complex ready racks all just begging for resale...

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Thursday, August 09, 2007 - 12:52 pm: Edit

Michael C. Grafton:

I covered the Armed variants.

Aux's I ignored. Large Auxes are identifiable very easily at long range (movement cost 2/3rds on a freighter hull is unique, if it is a 2/3rds movement cost ship, you do not want to tangle with it as an Orion in any case).

Your assessment of capturing a freighter of PF replacements is incorrect.

In most cases you cannot abscond with the freighter (it is too slow to escape), and the hull of a PF takes up more room in your own cargo bays than an equivalent load of smaller and more lucrative material. A single PF would take up almost the entire cargo bay of a CR (150 spaces maximum volume and a PF stored as cargo takes up 125 of that). Hulls are comparatively cheap, the money is in the electronics. If you took a freighter loaded with PFs moving to the front, you would be more interested in the small crates of spare parts to repair the electronics of PFs than in full PF hulls.

By Michael C. Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Thursday, August 09, 2007 - 03:43 pm: Edit

I presume you'd capture the freighter and hide it with a prize crew. Unload at your leisure with another ship (SAL or similar).

I agree that the zillions of parts (like fighter engine spares) would be the big $.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, August 09, 2007 - 03:48 pm: Edit

SPP posted: quote:"I do not consider a simple table (might not be what you intend) that just says "roll this and you get a freighter" workable because the opposition MUST be varied based on the size of the Orion ship being used."

I do not, infact intend a simple table.

What I'm grasping with is a table that can indicate random ships, with a variety of Skids, ducktails, and possibly commanders options equipment, and to have it work for each of the three years (year140, year 168 and year 185).

it would, in theory, be "balanced" for a range of encounters from a vanilla LR (at the low end) up thru a CA at the "high end".

For example, say the chart enounter rolls calls for 2 six sided dice...

the "low end" might fall at 1,1 (each 6 sided dice result was a '1') and might be a Small Freighter.

In year 140, it might be a vanilla freighter with no skid, or duck tail but has 4 boarding parties. that same result in year 168 would be a F-S with 4 BP and a duck tail. and if the Year was year 185, it would be a "fully tricked out" small freighter with skid, ducktail and 4 BP's.

if the Result was 6,6 (each die rolled a '6' result) would mean a Large Armed Freighter, with what ever the maximum commanders options equipment such a ship might be armed with (fast drones in year 185, plus BP's and other stuff.)

Point is, the encounter table would be used through out the campaign game, when ever a random freighter needed to be indicated.

the "card Flip might modify the result (say replace the Freighter with an appropriately sized Q ship), or indicate a specifc scenario or some such.

We need to make such a procedure playable, but still account for things that a Orion Pirate Captain might encounter.

And As for tailoring the BPV to the specific Orion pirate cruiser, I suggest that might not be workable.

the encounters will have to include both ships of equal size as well as opponents too tough and too weak... IMO want the LR captain should see 'F-L' come up... and agonize over taking it on since he must have the income to pay for repairs and crw salaries (or what ever economic thing we include in the campaign).

if the Captain decides not to attack.., he should have to deal with the effect on crew morale.

and if he decides to attack the F-S with a CA... let him sweat out whether it is a vanilla freighter or a armed small freighter or a small Q ship or even Mike Graftons trademarked "Weary Donkey" substitute Aux CVE thingee.

There needs to be two layers of tactical intelligence available. if the Orion Captain only knows what his ship would know at range S3, then so be it... but the opponent would know what actually was on the freighter...

The trick is, to come up with a payable procedure that doesnt kill people with Loren Knights "accounting nightmare scenario" thing.

Atleast thats how I look at it.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Thursday, August 09, 2007 - 04:48 pm: Edit

Jeff Wile:

I do not know about anyone else, but I would have zero interest in being a lone small freighter caught by a CR, (much less a CA or something larger). At that point, I think your whole campaign concept breaks down. An Orion CA would laugh at a small Q-Ship, which means if an Orion CA is being used, the campaign ends before it starts because you have built in no interest to play the Orion's opponent.

If you cannot balance it for each level of opposition (LR and CR for example), then I do not think you will find anyone willing to play the targets for an Orion CR or CA player.

Your campaign breaks down and is unplayable at that point.

Please note, the above is my opinion. The fact that other posters in this topic have not commented may indicate that they all think you have a brilliant idea (and I wish they would either say so, or say that they also consider the concept unworkable rather than standing mute).

As to matching BPVs (your quote: "And As for tailoring the BPV to the specific Orion pirate cruiser, I suggest that might not be workable."), I have no idea where that came from.

Certainly "I" (emphasis) never mentioned such a thing, or even considered it in my own original campaign. I never meant it to be a "BPV duel" (at least I never considered it such).

All I ever did was (for the LR) create a table of possible cargo mover encounters determined by random card draw, with another card that determined how soon "help" would arrive (usually a police ship versus the LR).

Versus the CR it was a table of small convoys, usually but not always unescorted I think (relying on their own staying power). The responding ship was (I think, been a long time and we never got the far in the campaign, which ended after the incident of the freighter bluffing the Orion into thinking it was a Q-ship) a Light Cruiser.

I cannot remember for sure if I covered the DW and BR (I think I did, but I am no longer certain . . . I wish to heck I could remember it all).

Stay around to fight the responding ship, and after a while another ship arrives (sometimes another police ship, sometimes something larger).

But BPV was never a factor.

The factors were only that the Orion had to avoid damage, and transfer as much cargo from the ship to his ship as possible (preferably enough to fill the Orion's cargo bay), and disengage.

Often the disengage was under fire from the approaching police ship (in the campaign).

But BPV simply was not a factor. The campaign (when I did it) revolved entirely around cargo points stolen by the Orion and avoiding damage.

Sure, the freighters got to spend for their Commander's Options (so did the Orion), and sure there were a lot more options available under Commander's Options back then (freighters could have T-bombs and NSMs, for example).

Now there are far more options (due to the Skids and Ducktails) in one sense, and accounting for them is (to me) the major headache.

And, by the way, The "weary donkey" freighter-carrier as something traveling independently is not an option. While Module R11 includes a fighter skid, it is very specific that such a skid can only be on a freighter that is part of a planetary defense force, it cannot even have fighters when traveling from the place it was made to the place where it will serve as part of a planetary defense force.

And Auxiliaries are just something I would flat ignore in a campaign unless there was a specific scenario that went something like "Mercenary Contract, attack the Auxiliary".

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, August 09, 2007 - 06:10 pm: Edit

SPP: The thing is that such encounters, Orion CA and lone Freighter can be handled via non-scenario rules. For one thing, the campaign should provide that taking that encounter will not provide enough profit to move a large pirate ships ahead. The second way of keeping things in line is that the two players each play the oposing side in an alternating fashion. You keep score as pirates so the guy playing the freighter is really interested in out playing you.

But in some cases the opponant whos turn it is to play the target may decide that things are not worth playing out so the small freighter scenario isn't playout. The Pirate gets the cash and you move on to the next encounter.

Additionally, the freighter phasing player should be given some extra points to play with. These points take away from his bank. Call them, suprise points and each play gets some added to a bank to be spent at some point to use against his opponant during a freighter turn.

This ensures that there is something to be gained by both sides and the whole picture of pirating can be covered without bogging down play.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Thursday, August 09, 2007 - 06:57 pm: Edit

Loren Knight:

And you would find a campaign where you show up with your Orion CA SSD and the random die roll says "no encounter (i.e., automatic payout for encountering only a small freighter)" three or for times in a row to be enjoyable? Note, if the result is small freighter, the CA takes it. There is NOTHING a Single Small Freighter can do against an Orion CA. The level of fire power at the end of Turn #1 leaves a ship with only a few cargo boxes remaining to be transferred to the Orion. There is no "game" to play.

A Small Freighter can operate against an LR if the LR has to worry about not doubling his engines and having enough power to arm his weapons and disable the freighter, loot it, and get out of dodge. (Double the engines, you are spending credits, launching drones puts a limit on the number of attacks you can do before you have to go spending credits to buy replacement drones, etc.) The freighter player can try to hang on for help.

But there is no fight between an Orion CA and a small freighter.

The Campaign SHOULD BE INTERESTING. The Encounters in the Campaign should be those times when you HAVE to play it out. If it does not have some interest to BOTH SIDES it will not be played.

By Jonathan Biggar (Jonb) on Thursday, August 09, 2007 - 07:35 pm: Edit

---

Quote:

And you would find a campaign where you show up with your Orion CA SSD and the random die roll says "no encounter (i.e., automatic payout for encountering only a small freighter)" three or for times in a row to be enjoyable?

---

By Reid Hupach (Gwbison) on Thursday, August 09, 2007 - 09:02 pm: Edit

Also I have found the two player campaign can sometimes be difficult since its to the freighter players advantage to play a freighter as no freighter captain who wants to live to fly a ship again will play, gee on turn three due to excessive damage the freighter Captain decides to self destruct.

Not so much fun.

This ties into a point i made a couple weeks ago that civilian ships should make a morale check when encoutering Pirates, or at least when certain things happen when encountering Pirates.

Example of events causing morale checks.

Shield being knocked down.

When it becomes obvious you cannot outrun your opponent.

Distance of time before help arrives determined at 5+ rounds.

Loss of weapons.

loss of control spaces.

ETC ETC

At times such as these a civilian Captain HAS to take into consideration the lives of his crew/passengers and should be forced to make a "morale Check" to see if he surrenders or keeps up the fight.

Yes a small freighter is no match for a CR, he should know this and just surrender if he has no chance to run away or help will not arrive in time.

They would know very few pirates kill opponents who surrender and dont cause even slight damage to their ship.

But If the morale rules for civilians is in the rules I've yet found them.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, August 09, 2007 - 09:10 pm: Edit

SPP: I think I had already addressed that but maybe its just in my personal notes. The Pirate player can influence the die roll by choosing a stratigy (a mission chart). That is if he is looking for purely a random patrol, if he is looking for convoys, or if he is mining or surveying, or looking to raid colonies. Each has its up's and down's.

Sort of like directed damage in FC each chart can have its own choices and influences.

So little ships could choose big prey if they feel lucky or big ships could choose little prey but not really gain enough to pay the bills.

The idea is that some encounters you don't play out but it is easy to conclude those and you move to generate the next encounter. It may turn out that you work out three encounters that don't reach the scenario play but that take about ten minutes. So you manage your ship until you have an encounter you really want. Only the ones worth paying will result in earning enough credits to maintain your ship so sooner or later you need to go for it.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Friday, August 10, 2007 - 12:31 am: Edit

(U___.0) The Orion Pirates Captains Game.

This Campaign Simulates a Piracy Career. Successful Pirates will "buy up" into larger more powerful ships. Unsuccessful captains to a long period of enforced rest at any of several Federation prison colonies. It is played in a series of scenarios reflecting the varying challenges faced by Orion Pirate Captains. This Represents the number of encounters a Pirate might expect to face in a 5 year period of time.

(U___.1) The following Scenarios comprise the Orion Pirate Captains Game:

1. (SG1.0)Combat against a single enemy ship.
2. (random Encounter. Roll 2 die 6 against the encounter chart. this is the ship detected by the Orion Pirate.)
3. (SG3.0) Base Defense
4. (random Encounter. Roll 2 die 6 against the encounter chart. this is the ship detected by the Orion Pirate.)
5. (SG4.0) Basic Piracy
6. (random Encounter. Roll 2 die 6 against the encounter chart. this is the ship detected by the Orion Pirate.)
7. (SG5.0) Duel with a Pirate Raider
8. (random Encounter. Roll 2 die 6 against the encounter chart. this is the ship detected by the Orion Pirate.)
9. (SG6.0) Pursuit into the asteroids
10. (random Encounter. Roll 2 die 6 against the encounter chart. this is the ship detected by the Orion Pirate.)
11. (SG7.0) Pirates go for big game
12. (random Encounter. Roll 2 die 6 against the encounter chart. this is the ship detected by the Orion Pirate.)
13. (SG28.0) Raid on a Survey Camp
14. (random Encounter. Roll 2 die 6 against the encounter chart. this is the ship detected by the Orion Pirate.)
15. (SG34.0 Merchant Pirate Soldier Spy
16. ((random Encounter. Roll 2 die 6 against the encounter chart. this is the ship detected by the Orion Pirate.)
17. (SGSG35.0) A Question of Franchise
18. (random Encounter. Roll 2 die 6 against the encounter chart. this is the ship detected by the Orion Pirate.)
19. (SG37.0) Destruction of the Wolf pack
20. (random Encounter. Roll 2 die 6 against the encounter chart. this is the ship detected by the Orion Pirate.)
21. (SG51.0) Hey that my freighter
22. (random Encounter. Roll 2 die 6 against the encounter chart. this is the ship detected by the Orion Pirate.)
23. (SG52.0) Raid on a Mining Planet
24. ((random Encounter. Roll 2 die 6 against the encounter chart. this is the ship detected by the Orion Pirate.)
25. (SG55.0) Race to the base

Random Encounter Chart (used in odd number scenarios).

___	_ ___D I E R O L L ____"

___

'1.

. '2'.

.'3'.

.'4'.

.'5'.

.'6'.

'1'	F-S	F-S	F-S	F-S	Fed Exp	APT
'2'	F-S	F-S	F-S	F-S	APT	APT
'3'	F-S	F-S	F-S	F-S	F-L	F-L
'4'	FT	FT	FT	F-L	F-L	F-L
'5'	FT	FT	F-L	F-L	F-L	F-L
'6'	FT	FT	F-L	F-L	F-L	F-L

Notes: Each time a random encounter is rolled, mark the chart in some way to indicate that the encountered ship is nolonger available. in the cases where an encouter is subsequently rolled again, simply move 1 box to the right until a fresh ship is encountered. if no ships are available on that column (or all ships have been encounted, move down 1 row to the furthest available box on the left most column.

OOC:

At this point I think maybe we could integrate SPP's card system to indicate Skids, ducktails, Boarding Parties, quships, armed freighters, etc.

We also need to come up with some economic system that makes sense as the pirate will only have 3 cargo boxes on the LR, and we need to figure some way to handle repairs, and trading in the old ship for the new one...

I'd guess there is no objection to the Pirate player being able to find a base after every scenario encounter?

We also need to figure a "lease arrangement" cost, as I wonder how many new LR captains own their ships out right?

More likely, he has to make payments to the cartel for the use of the ship.

To deal with SPP's comment that no onw would want to play a series of losing F-S vs LR battles, a squick combat system needs to be available for quick resolution...

I'd also have to say that the opponent to the pirate player ought to be like "Captain Reid the Merciless" merchant... win lose or draw, he gets victory points for every battle for the difference in BPV's of the ships... Ideally, he could lose every battle and out victory point score the Orion pirate...

By David Crew (Catwholeaps) on Friday, August 10, 2007 - 01:32 am: Edit

Jonb: I've wasted many an hour playing scenarios which, after two hours of play, turned out to be not very balanced and a foregone conclusion before putting counters on the map. (e.g. Any historical scenario in basic set, SG26.0 raid on a survey camp).

Not everyone sitting down can immediately predict the outcome of 'one sided' scenarios, and intelligently decide to skip them. More likely they'll reason 'The designer put this scenario in for a reason - there MUST be SOMETHING the small freighter can do to make this a challenge for the Orion CA... Better play it out...'.

It is helpful therefore if the campaign designer has already weeeded out the one sided wastes of time...